Twitter doesn’t sell books. Well, in the week since I’ve started this
marketing upgrade it’s sold two of mine I wasn’t expecting and, more to
the point, has added three people to my Newsletter list – this in the
face of the previous eight months’ desert. Twitter can help build your
platform. This is my ongoing goal.
I’d better mention that I
don’t own a smartphone and haven’t come to grips with my Hudl tablet, so
on-the-hoof interacting via social media of any description is anathema
to me. I work on my laptop and the distraction of social media streams
flitting past my eyes or pinging in my ears is beyond the pale. This
means that scheduling is required, manual and automatic.
Twitter
itself lives in the moment; applications such as Tweetdeck and Hootsuite
enable scheduling, and also ‘quoting’ which allows more than the
bog-standard 140 characters. Whereas it used to be a text-only medium,
it is now, as are all social media streams, image heavy.
I use
Hootsuite, mainly because it was the first application I tried many
moons ago. However, until this week I’d not taken the time (a morning)
to learn how to use it properly (‘quoting’) or to discover via Googling
the problem why my images only showed up as a link (change Hootsuite’s
preference from ‘ow.ly’ to ‘pic.Twitter.com’).
 |
| A first try. I'll sort the text, honest. |
Most of my images
are, naturally, portrait-shaped book covers, whereas Twitter arranges
images as a landscape at a 2:1 ratio (1024pixels x 512px optimum) and cuts oddly those not adhering to this ratio. By
viewing the Home feed I’ve found that other authors tackle this by
creating suitably shaped billboards which can take a variety of
interchangeable text. This is now an ongoing project for all my titles.
 |
| An adjusted Facebook header, so not quite 2:1. Needs work. |
Of
course, even clueless me realises that a deluge of book promotions will
endear me to no one. Tweets should
engage, inform and entertain with
advertising one’s wares way behind. For me, this is where automated
scheduling comes into its own. Hootsuite offers a dashboard of streams
populated with Tweeters of my choosing.
Some time ago I set up a
stream to include writers I know. This has been expanded to include
people and organisations who Tweet information complementing the
subjects and locales used in my novels, from @Medievalists and
@BLMedieval - British Library Medieval Manuscripts (
Hostage of the
Heart), @Roman_Britain (
The Bull At The Gate) to @NorthYorkMoors (
Torc
of Moonlight). Each evening I go through this handy stream and schedule
RTs (reTweets) scattered across the following day.
Twitter
itself offers a list facility, and I use private lists for authors
grouped by genre as this is how I started, pre-Hootsuite. Any RTing has
to be done manually, so I might check a list as I close for lunch and RT
a couple of Tweets that draw my eye. If I RT’d ten my feed would look
as if a bot was operating it, which is how I would be acting.
I
also have posts from a few blogs coming direct to my Inbox, notably English
Historical Fiction Authors whose posts could grace many an academic
forum. Those within my time periods, or those I just find fascinating, I
jump back to the blog and Tweet from the base of the post.
This
is the time to ‘Like’ Tweets in which I’ve been ‘Mentioned’. People who
take the time to RT my Tweets I Like and/or thank. A bit of appreciation
goes a long way. Often I RT one of their Tweets as a thank you.
However, I find it surprising how often a Tweeter does not use a Pinned
Tweet, basically a flag indicating which of their Tweets they would
appreciate being RT’d. Make it easy and keep it changing. I’m not going
to RT a Tweet that has been sitting at the top of a stream for four
months. As soon as this post is uploaded a Tweet to it will replace the
Pinned Tweet from the first post in this series. Find it at
https://twitter.com/LindaAcaster
As to promoting
my own titles, for ease of counting characters I dedicate a Word.doc to hold
previously used Tweets. I’ll copy & paste a couple into the scheduled mix
ensuring the timing is right for the title. For instance,
Beneath The
Shining Mountains has sold reasonably well in the USA but hardly made a
mark in the UK, therefore there isn’t much point Tweeting the title at
8am GMT; the USA is 5-8 hours behind London time. Anyway, who buys books
straight after breakfast?
I use #hashtags, not very
well I have to admit. During the week I came upon #CleanRomance (and later #CR4U) and I
am certain that one attached to a Tweet for
Hostage of the Heart sold me
a copy in the USA. The novel is what I term a ‘sweet romance’ but there
is no hashtag for that description.
I'm finding that Twitter need not be a
distraction, it can be tamed and become a useful tool. I
treat people as I want to be treated and my Follower numbers are
steadily increasing. None of this is a one-week job. To think of it in
fiction-writing terms, it’s a sub-plot that reflects and bolsters the
main storyline.
Three links I found particularly useful this week:
http://louisem.com/50053/how-to-make-blog-graphics + resources list
http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/ultimate-guide-social-media-image-dimensions-infographic
It does what it says in its title.
http://thestoryreadingapeblog.com/2015/03/24/what-you-need-to-know-about-twitter-hashtags-infographic-and-list/
A comprehensive infographic and list of Twitter hashtags.
Ongoing:
study hashtag use in other people’s Twitter streams [obvious - doh!]
and check who uses them. Would these people be good to Follow?
Launch Update: On Friday I announced on Facebook a tease, ie no title or cover image:
“A week today I'm launching a new Supernatural Short for the dark
nights of winter - the type of story where the sucking of the wind could
be a disembodied voice, twigs scratch at the window, and doors creak
where they've never creaked before. This story stars a shed.
I'd like to say it is a paranormal, but unfortunately that word has
become a euphemism for... obviously I'm writing in the wrong genre :-) ”
My Facebook account is linked to Twitter, so it was Tweeted automatically, though obviously not in that depth.
Finally, in this blogpost I’ve
gone into more detail than I intended because I was
contacted during the week by a writer who found the
Make a Plan post useful. If you’ve found this one useful, please Tweet it – LOL! Thanks.
It's not just novels which need researching; so does back-end stuff like genre, publishers, agents, and... social media. Unless you're under twenty-five you weren't born with an inherent understanding of the technology. It has to be learned.
